Bradford:Lister Park DCNN 4045 – A Venerable beauty in contrast with an ugly sister.

53.81362 -1.77385 Met Office Assesed CIMO Class 5 Archived Temperature record from 1/1/1908

It is often quite difficult to precisely locate Met Office weather stations and even harder to get close up images. Not so with Bradford – this is an immaculately well cared for site that is a front and centre display of civic pride. All the instrumentation may largely be the same as even some of the most modest sites but this one is no shrinking violet. It does, however offer stark contrasts with its near neighbour and ugly sister, Bingley

For uniformity this is the aerial locator view of the site within Lister Park.

Unusually for a weather station there are numerous archived online news items regarding Bradford going back a long time – this featuring the 1970’s.

https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/23811794.know-bradford-weather-recording-station/

The nostalgia was bought up to date by the BBC themselves.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/content/articles/2008/11/17/lister_park_weather_feature.shtml

Although the station is now automated, it still appears to be cared for meticulously and regularly maintained. Bradford seems to be proud of its venerable weather station.

How does this site compare in terms of supplying data to the historic climate record? Obviously it is in anything but a natural environment with an artificial body of water, manicured gardens, astroturf sports surfaces and botanical gardens. Since the site’s original installation the population of Bradford has more than doubled. This increase actually hides the much denser home occupancy numbers over 100 years ago, with the subsequent urban sprawl bringing this once northern outskirts park into a more urban setting.

The Met Office rates this site as the lowest possible standard Class 5 which warrants their tape measure style judgment system to compare with nearby Bingley. Below is a 30 metre circled area from the exact screen location.

Leaving aside the footpath there are no other extraneous heat sources. Shading from large trees, though possible, lies outside the circle. There certainly are no massive electricity transformers as compared in this similarly sized circled area of nearby Bingley as below.

Bingley (with its attendant massive heat sources) is rated Class 4 (additional inaccuracy due to siting of up to 2°C) BUT Bradford with no such distorting features is rated Class 5 (additional inaccuracy due to siting of up to 5°C) This rather seems the wrong way around, indeed it is hard to see how Bingley is acceptable at all.

Furthermore looking at how the Met Office themselves justified their Bingley rating, they resolved down the influenced area to just 3 Metres as per their supplied area circling. (n.b. not mine)

What does this 3 Metre circled area from the Stevenson Screen at Bradford show? The 3 metre area does not even exceed the confines of the Bradford enclosure.

The Met Office is operating one set of rules to justify their bizarre rating of a weather station located hard alongside Bradford West Electricity Sub-Station and known as Bingley No 2 with a completely different regulation interpretation of the reasonably good station Bradford:Lister Park.

I do not anticipate any response from the Met Office though they really do have a case to answer.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2025/01/15/bradfordlister-park-dcnn-4045-a-venerable-beauty-in-contrast-with-an-ugly-sister/